Breaking Patterns

Life is a series of patterns many of which are helpful and others can hold us back, or worse have destructive consequences. Living a conscious life involves being aware of patterns and taking steps to remedy the ones that don’t serve us. This is not an exact science and it does take work. What’s important to know is that there are tools available to assist in breaking unhelpful patterns and creating new ones that align with your well-being.

Using specific techniques we can gain insight into habits and thought patterns that need to shift. But it starts with building awareness of these patterns. 

Let’s look at patterns related to how we work. Many of us could benefit from more structure to complete our tasks and meet our goals. We may have developed a loose and unstructured way of working. Maybe our employer doesn’t provide training and guidance in this area. Or we may be self-employed and not skilled at being efficient. Once are aware of a pattern we can work to address it.

Patterns of behaviour, known as vasanas, get established and become life’s habits. They arrive from taking an action, known as karma, that we enjoy. Say for example we try a chocolate truffle for the first time and really like the taste. This enjoyment is a positive thought imprint, known as a samskara. We end up wanting more chocolate truffles and over time we develop a chocolate truffle habit or pattern of behaviour which may or may not be helpful. 

A pattern that many of us are increasingly plagued by is the incessant viewing of social media apps on our smartphones. We can’t be faulted entirely because the apps are designed to create dopamine hits, in other words, to be addictive. Sadly, statistics show that we invest 2.5 hours of our lives each day swiping left, up, down or in whatever direction. That’s a lot of lost time! 

What’s even more insidious are thought patterns. For example, there are negative inner voices that we may or may not be conscious of. These maladaptive thoughts, known as vikalpas, have the potential to result in maladaptive behaviours. They can be deep-driving desires that sabotage us from living a joyful life. 

Examples of these nasty inner voices are "you are not worthy of success", "you are ugly” or “you are not worthy of love.” It’s evident how these patterns of negative self-talk are toxic and unhelpful. 

Regardless of the type of patterns, some become supercharged and we can’t control ourselves when their urge surfaces. This sounds like addictive behaviour, right? In wellness coaching, we take a more compassionate approach refraining from labels, helping clients shed light on their patterns and offering them some tools to work with that will affect change. 

The goal is to eliminate the unhelpful patterns and generate new ones that contribute to wellness and a prosperous life. 

Yoga offers many tools to effectively address these patterns. But from a tantric point of view, we want to use all tools at our disposal to tackle unhelpful patterns. Think of the various ways you can affect positive change in your life. Aside from yoga things like coaching, psychological counselling, psychiatry, peer support, spiritual guidance, energetic healing, and mind-body awareness modalities like Thai Chi can play an important role.

There are many tools at your disposal to break these patterns.

What is important to understand is we need not wait for unhelpful patterns to negatively affect us. By identifying them now and beginning the work of breaking them down, we move closer to living our best life. 

The choices are many and it may seem confusing in terms of your next steps. If you are interested in moving beyond patterns that are getting in your way of living your successful life it may be time for some wellness coaching advice. 

You can book a free 30-minute onboarding wellness consultation with me to explore your situation and see if working together is a good fit for you. 

On this call, we will discuss your situation and I’ll explain how my wellness coaching program works. If you like my approach you can register for the program. 

Breaking patterns is important work. Frankly, it’s work many of us will choose not to do because it just seems too hard. But if not now when? You deserve to get the best out of this life. Choose to act now. 

Breaking patterns is a tremendous achievement. You can be the next success story!